2002-06-09 - 12:30 p.m.
I am just a new boy
A stranger in this town
Where are all the good times
Who's going to show this stranger around
Friday night we went into D.C. In the car coming back from Annapolis on Friday, Matt, the high-school kid in our group, showed me the map and pointed out the area we were going to, even though the map was shitty. "You seem to be the one with the good sense of direction," he said, and I was flattered.
Going in on Friday, Heather was driving, and the acceleration across the beltway and into was indirect. "I would have just taken Route 1 [the road that goes north-south through College Park] straight in," I said.
Laughter. "You might not have made it." Apparently it passes through some bad neighborhoods.
Heather doesn't usually go into D.C. She goes to Baltimore; our group plans to go to Baltimore next Saturday, hanging out with people who live there and seeing what that city has to offer. Yet even though she declaims familiarity with the streets in this area, we make it to Georgetown, where the nice restaurants and some clubs are.
Walking down the street in search of someplace to eat, I see a SunTrust bank on a corner, shaped like an Octagon with a cornice on the top. Look, it's a panopticon! I say. "Will you shut up!" is the reply, although the statement and the reply are in joking tones. Thing is, especially with the clock attached to it, I was serious.
Georgetown is a mass of expensive shops, restaurants, crowds of people--well dressed, trying to be, and some homeless. We find a sushi restaurant and order a bottle of win along with our sushi. We start to get a little tipsy.
Then the sushi came out, a mass of delicately carved opulence. A rush of thoughts and emotions of money, power, and deserving went through my head. I recalled something that I told Pav once on my balcony when we were both drunk and complaining about our lives: We’re in the county that most of the world thinks of as the ultimate in wealth and luxury, and within that society we’re college students, held up as the ultimate in leisure and excess. I think we’re doing just fine.
On another sushi plate, one piece captivated me. I found out later it was flying fish caviar wrapped in seaweed and topped with a raw quail egg. “That’s the most opulent thing I’ve ever seen,” I said, and soon after ordered one for myself. “There hasn’t been decadence like this since the Roman Empire,” I said, “here we are, in the richest society in the world, stratified by wealth and we’re near the top, in the capital city laid out on classical lines.”
Heather and Ryan are laughing at me “Your problem is you over-analyze everything,” Heather said.
“That’s true,” I said, “and the best friend I ever had did the same thing. She was an anthropology major, and we would get drunk and overanalyze everything together.” She should be here, in the anthropology master’s program at the University of Maryland, I thought, but she’s off on some tangent with her life not together and growing farther apart every moment.
After we finished, we settled the check and left. Actually, although my appetite is enormous, Heather and Ryan were stuffed by the sushi they order together. When it looked like they wouldn’t finish, we joked about going to the vomitorium and then coming back for more.
After sushi we attempted to find this club that Heather’s brother had recommended. According to the directions he gave, we should have passed it on the way in, on Dupont Circle, but we passed no circle on Wisconsin Avenue.
Eventually, we pulled into a gas station to buy a map, and but then we overshot the mark and were headed for the mall, and beyond that, a bad part of town. Okay, turn right on 11th street, I said, then K Street, then right on 16th. Behind us, three blocks away the White House was illuminated, its four visible columns radiating down the street.
We found the club, which looked like it was combined from four brick buildings. It had multiple bars, dance floors, and excessive decorations and stained glass windows. In the bathroom there was a valet to keep people from doing lines on the sink.
We successfully made it back to College Park, and Saturday night we stayed there at Heather’s apartment, which was considerably less exciting.
